Landry Jones didn’t care when he was drafted or where he went. He is happy to be in Pittsburgh, which won four Super Bowls with Terry Bradshaw as their quarterback and have another two with Ben Roethlisberger.

Kevin Jones, though, needed a little more time to warm up to the idea of his son being a part of Steelers Nation. Kevin was a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan, having shown love to his team by naming his son after Hall of Fame coach Tom Landry.

“He had a hard time coming over to it,” Landry said with a laugh in a phone interview last week, “but now he’s pumped; he’s excited. He’s a diehard [Steelers fan] now.”

The Steelers drafted the former Oklahoma star hoping to groom him behind Roethlisberger. Charlie Batch, 38, had been the Steelers’ backup since 2002, but Pittsburgh signed Bruce Gradkowski and John Parker Wilson and drafted Jones.

Jones is the Steelers’ highest-drafted quarterback since Roethlisberger, the 11th overall pick in 2004. Pittsburgh selected Omar Jacobs in the fifth round in 2006 and Dennis Dixon in the fifth round in 2008, but neither Jacobs nor Dixon was greeted by comments from Batch about being the heir apparent as Jones was.

For his part, Jones has downplayed any talk about him being the future.

“Ben’s going to play however long he wants to play,” said Jones, who married Whitney Hand in Fort Worth on July 6, 2012. “I’m just here to take advantage of an opportunity to get to go out there, and whenever I do, I do. If I don’t, I don’t. It’s really out of my hands. I’m just going to work as hard as I can.”

The Steelers want Roethlisberger, 31, to play out his career in Pittsburgh, and he likely will receive a contract extension before the 2014 season, when his cap number is scheduled to be almost $19 million. But only once in nine years has Roethlisberger played a full 16-game season.

Roethlisberger, who missed three games with rib and shoulder injuries last season, had minor knee surgery last week.